


Speak In Rounds

by nayanroo



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Babies for Everyone, Big Bang Challenge, Cohabitation, F/M, hot dad loki, hot mom sif, queen of everything jane, sif/loki big bang
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-18
Updated: 2013-08-18
Packaged: 2017-12-23 22:35:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/931861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nayanroo/pseuds/nayanroo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hundreds of years after the events of The Avengers, Loki and Sif have left the palace with their three children and live in the northern regions of Asgard. It is the only way Loki can maintain some control of himself and be a father to his children, while still allowing Sif to serve as a warrior of Asgard. Their arrangement is out of necessity, but when Sif is captured by enemies during battle, Loki must either find a way to control his fears... or lose her forever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Speak In Rounds

**Author's Note:**

> BIGGEST THANK to Skye/ [froopinghiddles](http://froopinghiddles.tumblr.com) for doing the [artwork](http://froopinghiddles.tumblr.com/post/58607866862/i-am-so-excited-that-we-can-finally-we-can-post) for this fic!
> 
> Thank you to the people running the big bang! it was a lot of fun to write. And to all my cheerleaders for keeping me going.
> 
> Enjoy!

The heels of her boots marked time as she strode across the polished floor of the audience hall. Sif’s stride was steady, and did not slow until she came to kneel in the center of a gold-limned design carved into the floor, bowing her head. “My king,” she said. “My queen, I come as asked. What would you have of me?”

“That you not be so formal.” Thor rose from his seat and bade her stand as he walked up and embraced her tightly. “How long have we known each other?”

“I know not for I have not marked the years,” Sif replied innocently. “But I know I can still knock you on your ass two times of three in the training yards.”

Thor roared with laughter as he gestured for the other courtiers in the hall to leave, and that gave Sif the chance to embrace Jane as well. The formerly mortal scientist’s skin glowed with good health; she carried her third child, and her belly was round under her gown of deep blue. “You are doing well?” Sif asked.

Jane’s grin was infectious. “I’m fine, thank you. Hungry all the time, among other things, but I’ve been through this before. How’ve you been, Sif?”

“It is always too long since I last saw you, these days,” Thor added. “How are matters in the north?”

Sif shrugged; though she did not quite have the mind for governance, she had assistance, and had learned much in the last several decades. “Harvest nears, as it does here,” she replied. “My lands are bountiful as it is in most of the north, in both our planted crops and our livestock. Which is just as well, for it seems Ullr is capable of eating his weight in a single day now, and if this keeps up he will surely diminish the productivity of the entire region with all the food he stuffs his face with. He has finally grown into your gift, though. He practices daily with it – I believe he will surpass your archer friend from so long ago.” Perhaps that was motherly pride, but Sif cared little either way. Ullr was her firstborn, and she did love him dearly. “He has his father’s ability with magic and it grows as fast as he does.”

There was a slightly awkward pause before Jane broke the silence. “And your girls?” she pressed. “Brynja and…”

“Kenna.” Sif’s smile never faltered, for her daughters were precious to her. “Brynja will be a fine warrior, and when she is old enough, I suspect Kenna may rival the brightest in Asgard for the sharpness of her mind, if she does not pick up blades or magic by then. But she is young yet.”

“You should bring them to court. Modi and Betha miss their cousins, and I think my mother’s sighs could fill the grandest halls in the palace, for she wishes to see them. And truly there has been nobody worth testing my strength against since you left, Sif.”

“From what I’ve heard, Kenna might enjoy seeing my research, too.” Jane gestured with one hand at the bright tracks of Yggdrasil across the sky above. “I’d love to teach her more.”

Sif felt her gut clench a little. “I thank you for your kind offers, but…” she trailed off, and the three of them fell silent again. “You know how he is about letting them out of his sight,” Sif finished, so softly her voice did not even echo.

“How is he?” Thor asked at last, his words laden with quiet anguish. Jane pressed her fingertips to Thor’s arm, and he covered her hand with his own. “How is my brother? I had hoped he would be here, I made sure the message asked for you both.”

“He refused, as he always does.” Sif turned her eyes to the flowers in the center of the table, unable to bring herself to look upon her friend’s sadness. “He still walks in darkness, but I think the children and the distance help. Most days he is nearly as he was before… everything. Or at least he acts the part, for their sake. Whatever his mind hides within it, Loki takes his duties as a father seriously, and that is all I ask. Believe me, Thor, I made every attempt to persuade him, but it was not to be.”

“I know I should not be surprised.” Thor rose from his seat, the crimson of his cape sweeping the floor as he walked onto the sunlit balcony. “But I still hope to see Loki walk these halls again – if not as a prince, then as a brother and a friend. My failings drove him away, and I try to make things right between us, but he refuses to _listen_ , and—“

“Thor,” Jane cut in. It had the sound of an old discussion to Sif, one that the king and queen had probably had many times before – at least as many times as Thor wrote to Loki and Loki read the letters and burned them – so she made no comment on it.

“I wish the same, my king,” Sif replied softly. “But he will do as he pleases, and I at least have come. What would you ask of me?”

“Ah—yes.” Thor turned back to them, and though there was tightness around his eyes, it seemed he had put the distressing matter of his brother aside for a time. “Something that I think only you can resolve has come up, Sif, something that needs your expertise in battle. It will take you away from your family until it is completed, but…”

“I’m certain they can manage without me.” Sif leaned forward. “I serve still, and they know it. _All_ of them know it.”

That brought a smile back to Thor’s face. “Then let us begin your briefing,” he said. Even over a hundred years after the last of his five mortal friends had died (gone to Valhalla, Sif was certain), their language remained upon his tongue.

It was a simple thing, when its parts were taken singly. Rebels had fortified positions in Svartalfaheim again, and had resisted all attempts at being rooted out. Thor had hoped to avoid sending Sif in, but as she was one of the best battlefield tacticians he had – if not _the_ best – he knew she would be able to accomplish what others had failed at, and they needed to put the rebellion down now before it gained more traction.

“I do not understand,” Sif said, when they were finishing up. “What is it they want?”

“They say a piece of Svartalfaheim for themselves,” Thor replied, “But that is a small demand, and not in keeping with other actions they have taken. The why does not matter so much at this point, though, particularly if they can be stopped now.”

“True.” Sif was no mindless slaughterer; one thing she had learned from Loki, before he had lost his way, was that understanding an opponent was part of a good victory. She had found this useful. “I will need a few days to return home and prepare.”

“You have it.” The three of them stood. “I would ask if you wished to stay for tonight’s dinner…”

“…but I must return north. Luckily it is not so far a ride.”

“Luckily.”

They saw her to the palace gates and the saddle of her horse. As she trotted out of the city not hours after entering it, Sif paused on a rise in the road and looked back, toward the gleaming towers of the palace and the shining, chrome-and-gilt of the city. Too many times she had turned her face away from here, it seemed. But her home lay elsewhere, and with a click of her tongue Sif turned Asmundr’s head and heeled him to a gallop, heading toward the edge of the city, and home.

*

He did not know how long he had been in his prison of light.

They were smart, his jailors. They varied mealtimes and when the light would be dimmed just enough so he could catch what sleep would come to him, so that he could not establish a rhythm of night and day. There were no guards in the room with his crystalline prison, nobody he could talk to. He was allowed only a few books, and told only to think on his deeds. 

The light, when it was not a sleep cycle, was all-encompassing and nearly blinded him at first. When he had come from the Allfather’s judgment, stripped of his armor and leathers and clad only in a roughspun tunic and trousers, they had shoved him inside and (he imagined) laughed as Loki had blinked owlishly, taking in his new prison. The guards had watched him pace it for a time before returning outside of the room, watched as he realized there was nowhere for him to hide, no corner or crevice that was not brilliantly illuminated.

Loki was always visible, and Loki was alone.

He was not sure how many days passed, how many months or years, before the stone doors opened and he had his first visitors.

Sif stood outside his cell. She looked to be going out on campaign, or perhaps coming from it. She was cloaked, the dark red fabric pinned at her shoulder by a silver disc inscribed with runes, and she carried some bundle in her arms – provisions, most likely, though she held them with utmost delicacy.

“What an _honor_ ,” he said. “And here I thought that my first visitor since being shoved into this hole would be Thor.”

“Your brother has more important business to attend to than to see to the welfare of a traitor,” Sif snapped. She was tense, Loki saw, in every line of her body as she stepped up to the glass between the rune-inscribed pylons of his cell. “As do I. But there is something I must do first.”

She shifted the bundle in her arms, pulling a corner of the cloth away, and it was not provisions but a child she held. Loki raised an eyebrow.

“Odd, to call me a traitor and then ask my blessing for your whelp in the same breath.”

“Neither of us need or want your blessing.” Sif’s voice was a whip-crack in his ears. “But this is your son, and I would have you know his face.”

The glass walls of his cell smothered most sounds from outside save the voice of whoever addressed him, but the sudden silence was not because of that. His heartbeat seemed abnormally loud in his ears, the rustling of his clothing like the rushing of a tide as he rose and went to stand opposite her, palm pressed against the glass.

“My son?”

“His name is Ullr.”

*

Sif knew she had been spotted long before she cantered out of the woods and into the expanse of planted fields surrounding the manor house. As the trees gave way, Sif slowed her horse, pretending she didn’t see the two children crouched in the wheat. Putting on an expression of worry, Sif gave Asmundr a subtle cue with her legs, and he pawed and snorted under her, tossing his mane as though on parade. 

“Is there something amiss, faithful Asmundr?” she asked with enough theatricality to impress a player at court. “Why would you balk so when you are on my own lands?” A giggle, quickly suppressed, floated up to her ears. Sif drew her glaive. “Show yourself, foul villain!” she cried. “Face the Lady Sif with what little honor you have in your black bones!”

Her two daughters leaped out, racing toward her with sticks for swords. Another subtle cue had Asmundr twisting to one side and rearing up as Sif brandished her glaive so the blade caught the light. “They reveal themselves!” Sif yelled, sliding to the ground once his hooves met it once more. “I stand and fight! For Asgard!” She did not put half her strength into blocking their sticks, let a weak strike to her arm knock her glaive out of her hand, and ended up on her back on the hardpacked dirt of the road with Brynja’s stick pointed at her and Kenna sitting atop her stomach.

“Do you yield?” Brynja demanded, all the seriousness a child of but sixty-and-four cycles could muster. Her honey-colored hair had slipped free of its tail at some point during the day and formed a halo around her head in the late afternoon light.

“Do you, Mother?” Kenna asked. Brynja scowled and poked her sister with her stick.

“Bandits don’t call their victims ‘mother’,” she hissed. “You’re _ruining it_.” Kenna turned a look on her sister that Sif had seen their father wear far too many times; it was a mix of extreme patience and judgment, and Sif had to press her lips together to keep from smiling. This was a serious situation, after all.

“I shall call her Mother because that is what she _is_.”

“I fear your criminal enterprise will not last long with so much dissention in your ranks,” Sif cut in. Both girls sighed, and Kenna moved off her stomach so Sif could shift onto one knee and wrap her arms around her daughters when they came in for hugs. Though she tried often for the cool her brother possessed already at the tender age of one hundred and fifty-two, Brynja leaned into Sif’s gentle touch upon her hair and grinned, and Kenna could not let go of her hand right away when they all parted at last.

“We missed you,” her youngest told her solemnly. 

“And I missed you, my daughters.” Kenna fell away as Sif stooped to rescue her glaive. “Brynja, get Asmundr, please. We cannot let him eat the crop before it is even harvested.”

She boosted the girls up into the saddle and walked along beside them, a steadying hand on her gelding’s neck. Asmundr was well-trained, however, and he walked along as placidly as a dowager’s palfrey, seemingly knowing that he carried two of the people who were most precious to her. Stroking his glossy black coat, she looked up at Kenna, holding on to the reins. “What has happened since I left last night?” she asked.

“Nothing.” Brynja paused, her mouth twisting with a smile she was obviously trying to hold in. “Ullr turned himself green by accident.”

“Stars, did he?”

“He asked us not to tell,” Kenna added. “But then Father walked in, and Bryn and me decided it wasn’t important to keep it a secret anymore.”

“I think if we had not started yelling, Father would not have come.”

“He was green, sister! It scared me.”

“Is Ullr all right?” Her son’s continued adventures in spellcasting often yielded peculiar and alarming results, but at least Loki was around to mitigate the aftereffects, though he seemed to find them amusing more often than not.

“Father wouldn’t put him right, and said he needed to figure it out himself.” Kenna seemed smug about this, as a little sister would. “But he did watch until Ullr turned back to normal and they worked out what he did wrong and I think it won’t take him so long to change back next time.”

“Better not to at all.”

“Mother,” Brynja said patiently, “Ullr is not _that_ good yet.”

“He will improve in time. Anything else?”

“I bested Ullr at staves,” Brynja said proudly. 

“And Father is teaching me to play tafl,” Kenna chirped. “He says I learn very quickly and have talent.”

“Tafl is one of his favorite games to play, and he is very good. Pay attention, Kenna, for what you learn on the board can be used elsewhere too.”

“Like battle?”

Sif nodded. “Like in battle. And I am proud of you too, Brynja. I know you have worked hard.”

“The weaponsmaster says I should go to the palace to learn.” Brynja peered at her mother, and Sif’s heart hurt to see the yearning there. Brynja would flourish under the palace weaponsmaster; her skills were already considerable for her age, and she could only improve from there. But it was difficult enough to get Loki to agree to visits, and Sif did not want to try and imagine his reaction to the idea of sending Brynja to the palace to live and train.

Sif looked straight ahead as they passed under the stone archway leading into the manor’s courtyard. “I will discuss it with your father,” she said quietly. “Perhaps you will have your wish.”

*

When she had first come north, the manor house had seemed huge. Its ownership had come to her from her parents, but she had never thought she would reside here permanently or use it as more than a hunting lodge. The caretakers she had appointed had maintained the buildings and planted the crops, and Sif had been very smart with her incomes, and the lands were prosperous. But she had not thought it would be a home.

The manor itself was made of dark, bronze-colored metal and stone; in the sunlight its low spires glittered almost as brightly as any building in the city. The shoulders of the mountains it nestled against cast all but the topmost level into shadow, and even that illumination was fading, and yet the building seemed to glow with an inner light, the metal and the light from the windows filtering out. When she had arrived, the whole manor had been spotlessly clean, but almost lifeless, a piece of metal waiting to be shaped. Now it combined the personalities of those within its walls.

After she’d handed Asmundr’s reins off to one of the caretakers, she herded the girls inside. There was a little stone-floored room, with pegs all around it for cloaks and benches with wood cubbies under them for boots. As she shrugged hers off, Sif noted that Ullr’s cloak was missing. Likely he had gone off into the woods to practice with his bow and lick his wounds after his little mishap.

“Come on, girls,” she said. “I have been long on the road and wish to be truly inside. The air has a bite to it, yes?”

“I was fine,” Brynja said absently. “It is pleasant, for harvest-time.”

“Do you think the king will ask us to go hunting with him again during _Freyfaxi_?” Kenna asked. “He gave me a bow, not like Ullr’s and smaller, and I took a hare.” Sif ran her fingers through her daughter’s silky black hair, and smiled. She had heard this story at least once every month for the last year, and it had yet to wear on her.

“I remember. He was very pleased with your offering to his table.” Thor had perhaps fawned over his niece a little too much, but when he rarely saw any of them it was expected. “But I cannot say if he will take either of you hunting. I will ask him when I return.”

A drawling voice spoke up from just beyond them. “Return? But you have only just come back to us here.”

Sif straightened, taking her time letting her gaze slide over Loki, up long legs and over a torso that had taken years to fill back out. He had a pleased smirk on his face when her eyes reached his at last, and when she crossed the entryway and kissed him, taking a handful of his fine over-tunic to pull him to her, she could feel the curve of his lips even still. Her fingertips brushed his jaw, and – ah, yes, there was the tension. So it was every time she went to the city, though at least now it did not induce his anger so often. The jealousy and irrational feelings of betrayal were more than enough.

“We must speak,” she murmured against his mouth, and sighed when she felt him stiffen further. Then she stepped back, her hand smoothing against his tunic. Both Brynja and Kenna had looked away in obvious embarrassment. “I will explain more when your brother returns,” she told them. “Which ought to be soon, for surely he has not eaten for at least an hour, and he has a nose for when dinner is nearly cooked.”

Loki’s expression was not one she liked at all, so Sif told the girls to check on when dinner would be ready, then fetch their brother and prepare the table. Watching as they both took off down the hallway, she turned to him at last and said, “Out with it.”

His eyes slid to one side. “There is nothing to say. We will speak later.”

“Do not.” Sif’s fingers grasped his embroidered sleeve, curling into it. “I will not have you sulking all through dinner and upsetting the children.” Loki shifted, uncomfortable, and she exhaled slowly. “Upstairs, then.”

The fourth level of the manor was smaller than the others, designed only for the master bedchambers. A carved bed – wood, but with gilt touches, a gift from Frigga long ago – dominated the bedchamber. To one side, low bookcases lined the walls; to the other, a table covered in blades of various sizes stood under the rack for Sif’s glaive and shield. She slipped both from her back, the glaive resting in its padded slots and the shield going to its hook, and turned to face Loki again. He was pacing like an animal, tense and angry now that he did not have to shield his daughters from it.

“So,” she said. Loki stopped pacing, faced away from her toward one of the windows.

“What was it Thor asked of you?”

Sif unslung her bag from her shoulders as well, put it on the bed but did not undo the ties to unpack it. Nervousness around him right now was inadvisable, and as much as she hated to be so calculating it was what worked best. “The rebellion on Svartalfaheim – your brother wants me to put a stop to it.”

“He is not my brother,” Loki snapped. “Surely you told him no.”

“I told him I serve Asgard,” she replied coolly. “Which I still do, in case you have forgotten.”

“This task is beneath you.”

“You do not choose for me, Loki.” Sif crossed her arms, glaring at the hard lines of his back. The forest-green suede was taut over his shoulders. “You knew that this might be the kind of task I would be set, ever since last year when the first rebellion broke—“

“Thor was too soft with them then,” Loki muttered. “Had it been my command, I would have had them all slaughtered—“

“But it was not, and they were not, and here we are.” Sif eyed his back, measured her words carefully. “This is the sort of task that could truly benefit from your knowledge of tactics. The rebels are—“

“Is this another ploy to get me to return to the palace?” Loki whirled, pacing around the bed. Sif had no fear that he would lay a hand on her, for he was smart enough to know he stood a more-than-reasonable chance of losing that hand, but she had already had enough of shouting with him since receiving the summons, and wanted no more of it.

“You will see it as such regardless, but it is a statement of fact. You have the best mind for strategy in the Nine Realms, and between the two of us we could easily have this over with in _half_ the time, if only you were not so thrice-cursed _stubborn_ about it.”

She began stripping off her armor and laying it out then, all the while watching Loki carefully out of the corner of her eye as he used the nails on one hand to pick at his opposite palm. A tic he’d never been able to break himself of or a plotted maneuver, she had no idea, but either way he said nothing more on the matter. Avoidance it was.

“Ullr turned himself green,” he said at last. The floorboards creaked as he walked over.

“The girls told me.”

A hand slipped up her arm, feather-light touches causing the fine hairs on her skin to stand up. Not an apology, but a truce, and more than she’d have ever gotten out of him at the start. “I imagined they would have. Did Brynja tell you that she took a hart?”

“She did not.”

“Ask her at dinner, I am certain she is eager to tell the tale.”

His fingertip slid back down, and when it reached her wrist, Sif twisted her hand so their fingers linked. They were not much for affection, the two of them; his heart too shattered for it and her too proud and their relationship more for their children than themselves (and she knew _that_ was likely the one selfless thing he had done in the last two centuries of his life), but there were times when it seemed there was something there. Betimes Sif yearned for it, but her practicality told her it was likely not going to happen soon, if at all.

“And you, Loki?” she asked, turning to face him fully at last. “How have you fared in my absence?”

Loki drew a breath, and Sif could all but see him shoving the anger and jealousy away, replaced with something he could only show to her, the scared little boy hidden behind layers of malice. “You know it is… always easier when you are around me,” he said at last. “I keep it away as best I can, but it creeps in, Sif, and it…”

He turned into her, shoulders hunched over and fingers gripping tightly to her arms, and Sif reached up and stroked his hair. It always unsettled her when he did this, but her heart ached too much to deny him what comfort she could give. “I know,” she said quietly. “I know. But it will not take you again. It _must_ not.”

*

He did not ask after Sif, or after his son, whenever any of his family members came down to talk to him, to attempt to turn his mind from its path. They must have noticed he was more taciturn, but thought him perhaps thinking upon his sins. It was Frigga who imagined it might be elsewise.

“Has Sif been to see you?” she asked. Loki watched her out of the corner of his eye; even though the room outside the cell was dim, his mother (he could think of her as nothing else, odd how the ties broke for Odin but not for Frigga) glittered in the light cast from inside, the gold threads in her gown catching and reflecting. She must have seen some response, for she nodded.

“I thought she might have come. So you know, then.”

“About my son,” Loki muttered.

Frigga pressed her lips together in a line. “He was born not long before I discovered you were alive. Sif has done an admirable job raising him on her own. She certainly did not _need_ to tell you, or bring him to show you.”

“Then why did she?” The question was more to himself than to her, but Frigga shrugged after a moment’s thought.

“Perhaps she wanted you to know your son’s face. He is partly you, after all.”

“He is part a monster.” Loki shifted, turning more of his back to his mother. “I’m tired, Mother.”

“Of course.” She rose – he could hear the rustle of her skirts, and paused. In the reflection on the opposite glass wall, Loki could see her press her palm to the window.

“Think on why she wanted you to know Ullr,” his mother said quietly. Then she was gone, and he was once more alone.

*

The night before she left again, Sif had taken her knives and gear into the den to check over and pack while the children wound down for bedtime. Ullr was good at this now – he was nearly to adolescence, and sat by the fire with a book open his lap, his dark hair falling into his face as he read. He looked much like Loki had, and Sif felt a far distant ache for things that had passed and would never be again. They had found new life in her boy, at least.

The girls had taken up their spots to either side of their father as he read to them quietly. She could only make out the rising and falling tones of his voice, but the stories were familiar; the book was one of Kenna’s favorites, tales from long ago, and the whole picture was so innocent that Sif would have laughed at it had she not seen it a dozen times before. Loki had a natural talent for storytelling. He probably enjoyed the whole charade.

She had explained things to the children earlier. None of them had missed their father sitting with a book of his own, stony-faced the whole time, but all of them were smart enough not to ask questions. Ullr, she knew, remembered how things had been before they’d left Asgard for the north, and had studiously avoided looking askance at his father until he deemed it safe. She’d caught him glancing over, though, and his expressions were not charitable.

Sif felt badly about that, despite knowing that the only people who could repair the relationship were Ullr and Loki themselves. She had done as well by him as she could have, given that she’d birthed the son of a traitor in a time of war. Sif knew how lucky she had been, in so many ways, for not every mother in her situation had what she had.

Loki had at least shoved his displeasure aside for now, for long enough to perform this nightly ritual which culminated in him slowly setting the book down and motioning Sif over. Between the two of them they got a mostly-asleep Kenna tucked into her bed – once she let go of her father’s shirt – and a half-asleep Brynja up to her room. Sif went downstairs one last time and stuck her head into the den.

“Ullr,” she said. “It’s time to go to bed.”

Light danced at the tips of his fingers as he wove the spell he was practicing, but it dimmed and splintered as he looked up at her imploringly. “One more time, Mother—“

“No, you’ve practiced quite enough for tonight. Upstairs to bed.” Ullr was already putting away his book as she spoke and trying to hide his yawn as he did so, and Sif smiled, for even in these small moments her heart was full of love for her son. They had forged a deep bond in those first years when all they’d had was each other, and he would always hold a special place to her.

“Do you think you could bring me back some books from the palace’s archives?” he asked as they went back upstairs together. “There are some that are mentioned in what I’ve been reading that I’d like to have.”

“I will take the list to the Archivist,” she said. “Though if she says any are inappropriate for someone of your age and skill…”

Ullr sighed dramatically. “I will have to wait until I am able,” he finished. “I understand. Thank you, Mother.”

“Would that I could send you to study there, or Vanaheim or even Alfheim.” Sif leaned against Ullr’s door as he moved around his room, methodically straightening things in preparation for sleep.

“Father would not agree to the palace at all,” Ullr said, and now her heart ached, for there was bitterness in his words that no child his age ought to taste. “And he dislikes the idea of sending any of us away from him for very long.”

“Your father is a very intelligent man, but betimes he can also be a fool, and his… maladies cause him to behave as he does. We cannot stop it, Ullr. We only do what we can.”

“I suppose I should be glad we are here together at all.” Ullr turned to look at her. “Though sometimes I wonder if we – if you and me, Mother – would not have been better off if we had never come north.”

“Never wonder, Ullr.” Sif walked over and laid a hand on her son’s cheek. “Whatever our situation, we are stronger together than we are separate. Do not forget that.”

Ullr sighed, and Sif let her hand drop. She would not get away with a gesture like that for very much longer, she knew. Her boy was fast becoming a man, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. “Good night, Ullr. I will see you in the morning.”

“Good night, Mother.”

Sif waited until the doors had closed behind her before heading up to the master bedchamber. Loki was already there with most of his armor and clothing off, moving about and touching the windowsills. She watched him as she undressed and slipped between the furs. Early in their partnership, she had taken offense to him constantly checking the wards and innate defensive spells of the manor, his paranoia over an attack from foes years in his past overriding all reason. Now she accepted it as part of the way he helped himself relax enough to sleep, and if necessary found ways to divert him if it seemed he was becoming too engrossed in it.

Tonight was not one of those nights, luckily. He touched his fingertips to the last one and then padded across the floor, shedding his remaining clothes as he went. Sif watched him watch her, his eyes glittering in the dim light, and felt heat begin to stir within her.

“Our son is asking for books again,” she mumbled as he joined her under the furs. His lips were on her collarbone, and Sif tilted her head to the side, basking in the sensation.

“Ullr has a keen mind,” Loki replied, and Sif squirmed a bit – a delicious, anticipatory squirming – as he trailed his lips over the big vein in her neck. His teeth grazed the skin and she dug her nails into his sides. He rose up and kissed her, teeth and tongue and need wrapped together. “You want me to make sure there is nothing on the list that is too… ambitious?”

His voice had grown husky, and Sif grinned. Hooking a leg over his hips, she rolled them over. Loki on his back below her was a sight that still filled her with fire, and one she was immensely pleased to have to herself. She leaned over, pushing her fingers into his hair as she kissed him hard. “You know me so well.”

“I do.” His hands were tight on her hips, lifting, guiding, and when she sank down on him she groaned softly, knowing she would never truly weary of the feeling of Loki inside her – nor would he tire of her, not by the way his eyes rolled back and his fingers tightened hard enough to bruise. “And to what end,” he whispered, when he could talk again, “Shall I use my knowledge?”

Eyes heavy-lidded, Sif rocked back the rest of the way, bracing her hands on his stomach. Muscle flexed under her palms, and she scraped his skin lightly with her nails, watched his eyelashes flutter. “I have a few ideas.”

*

Sif left early in the morning, for the ride to the city was long and she needed to be there with all speed. Her saddlebags secured, she knelt and embraced Kenna and Brynja, and Ullr suffered himself to be hugged as well, all of them agreeing to listen to their father and their tutors and behave while she was gone. Ullr handed his mother a small silver charm on a cord, and she put it around her neck obligingly, tucking it under her mail shirt.

Loki she gave her attentions to last, fingers curled against his jaw. He had had dark dreams in the night, ones that made him scream and thrash, and she worried for him, but he waved her concerns aside. Clearly despite his terrors he was in fine fettle, though his fingers touched her armor, over her heart.

“Return quickly,” he said. “And preferably in one piece, for I am still not certain a spell I attempt to use to give you limbs will not give you tentacles or feathers instead.” He paused, and his hand fell. “And I doubt I can catch Kenna and wrestle her into a bath on my own.”

“Fear not, I will not leave you to walk the treacherous paths of parenthood alone.” There was an awkward moment – a normal couple would have used it to embrace, to kiss, but there was not enough space in their lives for such things – and then Sif turned and mounted Asmundr. “I should not be gone a week, but if I am I will send word.”

She rode out of the courtyard, and while Loki went inside – preferring to watch her gallop off from behind a window – the children stayed on the stone steps. Ullr was the last one in, looking over his shoulder once more before closing the door behind him and going straight up to his room. Loki watched his son’s back get smaller and smaller and finally disappear upstairs, lips compressed into a thin line. He and Ullr had never had the best relationship, a point that bothered Loki far more than he let on. Fathers and sons were somewhat touchy subjects already, but he had given his word that he would do his best for his children, and this was one promise he meant to keep.

Loki filled his days with study, mostly; the terms of his release from confinement in the cell of light limited his activities, and there was little of interest for him outside the manor. He managed the northern regions in partnership with Sif, but with harvest coming on, there was not much coming in save crop yields and projections for the season.

Dinner that night was quiet. Kenna and Brynja told him of their lessons in the history of the Nine Realms and, at his insistence, what was known of the places beyond the Nine Realms. They were his children, he had reasoned when they’d had this discussion the first time. They would one day be called upon to go beyond Yggdrasil’s branches, and he wanted them to be prepared for it.

Brynja went on to talk about her weapons training (Sif’s idea that Loki had grudgingly agreed to, though the way his daughter’s face lit up cooled the sting), about how she was rapidly gaining proficiency at staff and sword and bow.

“I’m going to be better than Ullr soon,” she said, giving her brother a sly look. Ullr snorted into his dinner.

“Tell me that when you can actually hit the target _every_ time, instead of going wide twice of every ten.”

“Your bow _cheats_.”

Ullr shrugged. “I use the advantages I get.”

“As well you should,” Loki told him. Ullr gave him a steady look, then a half-smile.

They retreated to the den after cleaning up their plates from dinner. Brynja and Kenna had their own books to read. Loki watched his son trying out a new spell. Again and again he nearly completed it, green light touching his fingertips, and every time the glow faded and the faint ozone smell of magic dissipated.

“Magic is a matter of will,” he said at last. “If you do not _want_ hard enough, if you have no conviction in what you do, you will fail.”

Ullr tried again, the glow growing stronger and stronger until a ball of lightning erupted from his fingertips and went careening around the room. His sisters shrieked and dove for cover, and Ullr jumped up, his face white.

“I can stop it!” he yelled, “I can—“

The ball of lightning bounced off the side of the mantle and arrowed straight for the low table that Kenna had taken refuge under. Loki saw her eyes go wide before she tried to scramble out the other end, but she was going too slow, her tunic was caught—

He waved a hand and the ball dissolved into a thousand points of light that showered down over the table like feast-day fireworks, and Kenna’s fear turned to amazement as she peeked out. Brynja poked her head above the back of the couch to watch. Ullr, though, glared at him.

“I could have done it,” he snapped. “I could have stopped it.”

“You were not acting fast enough,” Loki replied. “It would have hit the table and hurt Kenna.”

“I’d never let that happen!”

“Why were you not fast enough to exert your will over the spell, then? A simple command of banishment would have sufficed.”

Ullr’s cheeks flushed, but his eyes were still angry. “I could have done it,” he muttered again, and settled back down. 

“Perhaps that spell is best done outside, in any case,” Loki said, trying to be gentle. Ullr gave him another dark look and tilted the top of his book up to block his father out of his sight. Swallowing an exasperated sigh, Loki went back to his own reading, and not long after, Ullr slammed his book shut and carried it up to his room.

After he put the girls to bed, Loki went to Ullr’s room. The door was closed, but the amount of light from under it meant that his son was still awake, probably reading, and the tang of magic on the back of his tongue confirmed it. He knocked twice before entering. Ullr was sitting on his bed, his back to the door, shooting perfectly-formed balls of lighting out of his open window. He didn’t look when Loki stepped inside.

“You should get some rest,” he said. “The more tired you become, the more erratic your magic.”

“I know.”

“I only meant to show you how you could improve, earlier.”

“I _know_.”

Sensing that was as far as he was going to get, Loki stepped back through the door. “Good night, Ullr.”

“Good night, Father.”

He went upstairs. The bedroom seemed too large without Sif there to help fill it, and as he made his way around the room checking the house wards and those beyond, he had to make the conscious effort to stop when he had assured himself of their stability. He had not lied to Sif – he _could_ not, one of the Allfather’s enchantments that had settled upon his mouth like golden string by Sif’s own request – when he had said the darkness was easier to keep away with her near. Even in the years before they had come north, when he had been volatile at best and unmanageable at worst, she had given him a clarity that he had sorely needed.

The next few days passed in much the same way. Mornings were given to management of the estates and to correspondence with their retainers; sometimes he would watch the children at their lessons, archery or history or politics or mathematics. Ullr was stiffly respectful during the time he’d set aside to practice magic, but that wasn’t unexpected, and he had no choice but to tolerate it. Anything else sent Ullr into a rage, and those were becoming more common lately. Loki did not want to resort to shouting matches with his son. They wouldn’t end well.

On the fourth day after Sif left, everything changed. Something about that day had seemed wrong, seemed _off_. The sky was overcast, and as the light dimmed into evening, thunder rumbled in the distance.

“Is Uncle Thor coming?” Kenna asked him. She was dressed in her pajamas, tucked against his side as they read. It was a Midgardian tale this time, the adventures of a being called a _hobbit._ Loki glanced toward the window.

“He would not come unless it was urgent,” he told her. Thor knew Loki’s rules. “We would have had word already.” The thunder continued to rumble when he told the girls goodnight and went back to his own books.

It was one of the wards blowing that finally got his attention. Loki had set them all around the estate; weaker ones farther out that served more to alert him to inbound visitors, and destructive ones that were closer in to the walls to serve as defenses in lieu of himself or Sif taking up arms. There were some people they were keyed to let through, but most needed some kind of charm to pass through. Loki intended to keep his family safe; there were many things in the outer darknesses that wanted him dead, and would not stop at using his children to get him.

He didn’t move – Ullr was still in the room, they’d just had another fight the day before and things were tense enough – but the magical alarm was clear and bright in his mind. It made no sense that this was the first alarm to be tripped, there were others farther out, which meant that whoever was coming had disabled them before failing to do so with this one. Loki probed outward with his magic, feeling for any trace, any idea of who was coming. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Ullr look up, no doubt wondering what his father was doing…

Loki stiffened as magical resonance hit him, and slowly closed his book. “Ullr,” he said softly. “Go fetch your sisters from their rooms. Have them dress and put on their cloaks, and take the ground passage to the stables. Do not light any lamps, do not let them talk too loudly. Just get them out of the house as fast as you can.”

“What’s going on?” Ullr asked, setting aside his own book. Disagreements aside, he knew when to be serious and obey. “Is it Tha—“

“ _Do not speak that name._ ” Loki flexed his fingers, pulling spells up to his mind to use. “No, it is not, else we would not still be here to talk about it. No more questions. Do as I say.”

He waited a full minute after Ullr went upstairs before rising from his seat. The shadows seemed to deepen around him, to slither up his legs and across his torso. When he stalked out of the den, he was swathed in black leather and green fabric that, curiously, made no noise as he moved toward the front of the manor.

Sif had not liked having it in the house, and when Ullr had started to show the extent of his magical talents so early Loki had come to agree, but he hated to throw away useful tools. The stone block he pressed his palm to had been enchanted to respond only to Sif, Thor, or himself, and the compartment that slid open beside it was shielded as heavily as the Weapons Vault in the palace and just as well, for the gem that glowed brighter at the touch of Loki’s hand on the scepter was powerful. He did not want it touching the minds of his children as it had the minds of the Avengers, long ago.

Its power coursed up his arm as he removed it from its padded cradle, and he was still holding it when Ullr brought the girls downstairs. He had the Hawk’s old bow slung across his chest, and Brynja had a knife stuck through her belt. All three of them froze, and Ullr’s face went pale seeing him holding the scepter. He remembered it, and knew what it meant.

“Father?” he asked, his voice very small. “What’s going on?”

“What’s that?” Brynja asked. Her eyes tracked the gem.

“The passage, Ullr.” Loki met his son’s eyes and let the tip of the scepter drop toward the floor. “If I do not join you in – well, you will know when you should run. Go to the palace, go tell the king as much as you can. Ride hard and do not stop.”

Kenna seemed on the verge of tears, and though he felt another ward crumble, Loki reached for his children, three people he would be selfless for.

“You all have my blood,” he said to them. “And your mother’s warrior heart beats in each of you. If you are sure of nothing else, be sure that I will always protect you from those who would do you harm.” He pried Kenna’s hand off the strap of his pauldron, put a hand on Ullr’s shoulder, and turned.

“Remember what I have said,” he told them. “No more waiting, Ullr. Go. _Now._ ”

He waited until he heard the _click_ of the hidden passageway door, and then allowed himself a broad smile. Whatever was out there had made a grave mistake in threatening the safety of his family, and he was going to make an example of them.

*

The moment Ullr spun a mage-light, his sisters began peppering him with questions.

“What’s going on?”

“Why are we hiding?”

“What was that staff Father had? Why was he dressed like that?”

“Why are _you_ in charge?”

“Because I’m oldest,” Ullr said. “Quiet! Father wants us safe and ready to go to Aunt Jane and Uncle Thor if we have to. Come on.”

He led them down the passage. Most of the time they only used it when the snows came and the courtyard was buried too deep for their father (or Ullr too, lately) to easily make paths between the stable and the manor house, but it had been built because his father and mother both had many powerful enemies, and had wanted a way to get their children out safe. They had drilled Ullr and his sisters on what to do, and so with the mage-light zooming along above them, they made their way under the courtyard and to the steps leading up to the secret door in the tack room.

“I’ll go first and motion you through if it’s safe. Remember to be quiet and stay inside no matter what you hear or see,” Ullr reminded them, and then pushed the door open.

The horses were nervous, stomping and snorting in their stalls as flashes of blue and green light filtered in through the windows high above the hayloft, but a quick run through the stable showed it to be clear of any intruders and both doors were still shut and latched. Ullr carefully lifted the latch on the one closest to the walls of the courtyard, and then ran back to the passageway door and motioned his sisters in. He took Kenna to a bale of hay and sat her upon it.

“If anything happens before we’re ready, you hide in Asmundr’s stall, okay?” he told her. “You bury yourself in the straw and don’t come out until it’s safe.” Tears beginning to fall down her cheeks, Kenna nodded, and Ullr turned to Brynja.

“Saddle your horse,” he said. “I’ll get Gyda ready… and Svadilfari.”

“He’s too big for you to handle alone!” Bryn hissed, even as she went and pulled her leggy mare out of her stall. “Father _said_ the last time—“

“I’ll be fine! Just… just get going!”

They worked quickly. Brynja had to bite her hand to keep from screaming when the stables filled with blue light and then shook hard as though struck. The horses kicked their stalls, and when Ullr quashed his fear and pulled Svadilfari out, the stallion reared up and nearly took Ullr with him. He wrestled the horse into cross-ties and tacked him up. And then they waited, and when the silence descended on the stable, Ullr could almost feel it settle on his shoulders like a heavy cloak. He jerked Svadilfari’s reins when the stallion began pawing the dirt floor of the stable again.

“What’s happ—“ Kenna started, but Brynja quieted her even as she turned round, frightened eyes toward her brother.

“Ullr?”

“Quiet.” He strained to hear noise from outside. There seemed to be voices outside, footsteps coming closer. Ullr tensed, ready to blast whoever came in with a spell… and released a breath when he heard a series of taps on the door. “It’s Father,” he said, and rapped out the correct reply with a magical hand. The door slid open.

His father walked in, pushing another in front of him with the tip of the scepter at their back. The other seemed to be a dark elf, his eyes an eerie crystalline blue. Their father’s eyes were slightly manic, his lips twitching as though holding in some kind of joke, but his expression smoothed as he pointed his scepter at another stall.

“Saddle her,” he commanded. The elf obeyed without a word, and Ullr felt a chill run down his spine even as his father set the scepter down and let Kenna run to him.

“See?” he said, his smile free of darkness now. “It was all right.”

“Are we going back inside?” Brynja asked. She had her hand on the hilt of her little knife.

“No.” Their father drew in a breath, and his next words made Ullr shiver again. “No, we are going to the city.”

“Father,” Ullr began, but his father raised a hand.

“Later.” He took his horse’s reins and settled Kenna on the saddle, then swung up behind her. “We’ve got a long way to ride.”

“What about—“

“It will all be taken care of. Right now I am not sure if we are still safe or not.” He nudged Svadilfari’s sides and rode out ahead, scepter braced across the pommel of his saddle. Ullr and Brynja followed.

His sister’s face was pale in the watery Branchlight and starlight, and as he looked at the courtyard, Ullr could see why. The light might have been dim, but the stones were strewn with bodies.

_Father killed them all,_ Ullr thought to himself, and then they passed through the archway and onto the main road to the city.

*

The better part of two years later, he finally asked after her.

“The Lady Sif,” he said to one of his guards. “How does she fare?”

The guards exchanged glances, as if silently asking each other if it was worth the trouble talking to such a one as him. Rage bubbled up in Loki’s chest – she was the mother of his _child_ , he had a right – and he slammed his fist against the glass. “Answer, fools!”

They turned their backs then, and Loki snarled and slid back down to lean against the corner of his prison. They had been instructed to ignore such outbursts from him, not feeding into the behaviors that others deemed unnecessary and harmful. He knew it, but Sif had not been to see him since her last visit, and a growing part of him was desperately curious to know her fate and that of her son. _Their_ son.

It was not Sif but Thor who visited him next, days later. Anger and fear had built up in him over the intervening time, and he had taken to pacing the perimeter of his beautiful cage, his mind turning things over and over, scenarios and theories and worries, driving him mad all over again. Seeing his erstwhile brother come in brought it all to a head.

“And am I not good enough for _her_?” he snapped. “Why does she not come?”

Thor seemed taken aback by this outburst, but he quickly covered it up. He had been getting better at that over the last few times that Loki had seen him, and it was more irritating than ever. How was it that change came so easily to his brother, that things Loki had cultivated over his lifetime were suddenly so desirable to the realm when they had been scorned previously? “Sif is not yours to command, Loki,” he said quietly. “And she serves Asgard. Things have… changed greatly, since you last saw the light of day.”

He sounded weary but it mattered little. “And so she tells me of the boy and then does not let me see him—“

“She has no obligation to.” There was a new note in Thor’s voice now, one of quiet strength. “Sif is not beholden to you simply because she bore your son. Truly she would not have needed to tell you at all that Ullr is yours – and he is a fine boy, Loki, a smart and strong boy, and if you were but yourself you could have sung him to sleep with Mother’s songs or watched him take his first steps in the garden, as I have done.”

“Are you father to him, then?” Jealousy colored his vision now, green enough to match the loose shirt he wore. “Has she taken up with you to protect herself?”

Thor was quiet so long that fear joined the envious rage, the fear that Sif – along with everyone else – had forgotten and replaced him. Then Thor shook his head.

“I offered to claim Ullr as my own when she found she was with child and again when he was born,” he said. “To love and raise him as you ought to have been there to do. But you know Sif, Loki, and though it tore her heart in two, she declined both times. It was difficult, for she had Ullr to think of, and even as an illegitimate child—“ they both shared a wince at those words, and Loki looked away, “—he would have been afforded position and opportunity.”

It made little sense to him, and as the darkness slowly retreated for the moment, Loki was able to breathe and think. “Why?” he asked. “Why refuse you, oh glorious shining prince?”

Thor’s gaze was steady despite the taunt. “When has Sif ever done anything she does not truly want to do? It probably would have worked out between us – we have been friends for so long, Sif and I and you, once – but our hearts were not in it, and Sif has always listened to her heart. It told her not to, and she heeded it, which is probably for the best. I am to be married, Loki, and it would please me greatly if you were there to see it.”

“I will not be trotted out as some spectacle—“

“You are of Asgard, and you are my brother,” Thor interrupted. “You may not be well-loved but you are not an animal to be displayed.”

“Glad that is made clear.” Loki turned his back, sullen. He had spent many hours envisioning a grand fight, a shouting match between the two of them, and it had not gone according to his plan. “What wench did you convince to marry you?”

“Jane Foster,” Thor said, and his love of her was obvious in his voice. “She is to become one of us, Loki, at the ceremony.” He paused. “Sif will be there as well, and Ullr. He is well-behaved when it suits him.”

“Not unlike his parents,” they chorused. There was an uncomfortable silence, then Loki waved a hand.

“Speak no more of it,” he muttered. Behind him, Thor sighed.

“I will tell Sif you are doing well,” the blond prince said. “She was surprised you asked after her and Ullr, considering you have shown no mind for either of them.”

“My mind is not a place for love and children,” Loki replied, almost in a whisper. The rustle of Thor’s clothing stopped for a moment, then continued until the cell’s dampening spells blocked out the noise, and Loki was left once more with his thoughts.

*

Noise returned Sif to consciousness first, the noise of men shouting, horses whinnying, hammers at forges drifted up to her ears, and roused her. Pain was fast behind Light, and Sif opened her eyes as she struggled up to sit with her back against the stone wall of her cell.

There hadn’t been enough time before they’d slammed something hard against her head and knocked her out, so she took a moment to examine herself. The pain was worst in head, side, and leg; probing fingers and a cursory examination showed that her left leg had indeed been lacerated badly, almost mauled, and felt broken. Her armor had been pierced on her torso, the jagged edges digging into her skin and drawing fresh blood with every movement. Her head… Sif’s fingers brushed across her scalp lightly. Her hair was crusty with old dried blood, but it seemed the wound under it had scabbed over. She was dizzy, but given the circumstances, she thought that was probably allowable.

Sif had just begun to remove the damaged plates of her armor, her movements painfully slow, when the door swung open. “Lady Sif of Asgard,” a melodious voice said. Sif struggled to her feet as guards marched into the room. Two hooked her under her arms and hauled her up, and she hissed at fresh pain in her abdomen. The speaker nudged her way between her guards. “Wife of Loki, son of—“

“We are not married,” Sif corrected swiftly. “Which you ought to know, Alfyse, considering you send to the king trying to arrange a marriage contract once every year.”

“An easy mistake to make,” Alfyse replied. “Given that you live together with your three children.”

“If you had wished to know of my home life, you could have written me directly.” Sif’s smile and voice were sweet, but her eyes were hard. “I promise I would have actually read your letters, rather than simply burn them.”

Alfyse was laughing even before she finished. “As much as I am loath to break the illusions you have created,” she said, “I feel I must tell you – I am not interested in _you_.”

Sif looked around herself, at her shattered leg and bloodied hands and the cell, and said, “No, it would seem you have no interest in me at all. Perhaps you could send me home? Or to the Healing Rooms, first, I cannot keep up with my youngest on a broken leg—“

One of the guards backhanded her across the jaw, and Sif tasted blood as she stumbled, tried to step onto her wounded leg, and nearly crumpled. The two who had been holding her up caught her again.

“No interest at all,” Sif mumbled, and grinned. “Right.”

“One would think that you would see your situation and have a care – you _do_ have children to look after.”

“And a very damaged partner.”

“Perhaps by your standards.” Alfyse leaned over, grinning. “But I think you will remain our guest until we can determine that for ourselves. I think you’ll find he’s not as broken a toy as you Asgardians think.”

She left and the guards followed, and Sif let herself fall heavily onto the thin, lumpy pallet that would be her bed. 

_Rescue will come soon,_ she told herself, once more starting the laborious process of stripping damaged armor off. _I have only to wait._

*

He had not been back to the city in over a century. Ullr had been very young when they had moved north, and Loki had steadfastly refused to accompany Sif and his children back to the palace whenever they visited. It had been spite concealed in necessity, and Sif had seen through it. Loki hated every time they had left, convinced they would not return, and worried that something would befall them, some harm he would not be there to protect them from. 

But the city was nearly as it had always been, golden and gleaming and full of people. They parted before the four lathered horses, and it was not silence but a tide of whispering that followed them. Whether it was his appearance – his black-and-green leathers, the scepter held crossways in front of him, and both of them at complete odds with Kenna’s face crushed into the crook of his arm as she slept – or the fact that he was there at all, much less with all three of his children and a dark elf whose mind was his to play with, the faces around them wore expressions of disbelief and apprehension.

Behind him, he could hear Ullr and Brynja talking quietly. Ullr had his memories of the palace, but Brynja had been born fifty years later and had only visited a few times since, but he seemed to be lording it over his sister whose eyes were wide. Loki bent his head and nudged Kenna with his arm.

“Wake up,” he murmured to her, and she stirred against him. “We’re here, Kenna. Sit up straight before me and look.” The palace rose before them, its towers glittering in the sunlight, and he felt his youngest daughter grip his arm tightly.

“Are you frightened?” he asked her. She shook her head, but her fingers didn’t loosen any, and while he normally disliked letting people see the gentler, parental side of him, Loki could not bring himself to tell his own daughter to leave off when she needed her father. He shifted reins and scepter and held his hand out. It dwarfed both her tiny hands when she gripped it and pulled it in close. “I will protect you,” Loki said quietly. “Whatever happens, I will keep you safe, daughter.”

“I know,” she said, and tightened her hands.

Someone must have gone ahead and told the palace, for when they rode up the long avenue to the front steps, there were already guards at the bottom and courtiers clustered upon the steps, with the king and queen and their oldest son as well. Loki straightened in the saddle. He would not be intimidated by whatever show the palace was about to put on with him, not when too much depended on him maintaining control. It was easy to feel like he was going to slip his own ties here, but also still easy to contain.

As soon as he dismounted though, the guards moved in, the points of their long halberds surrounding him, and another ring outside that with their hands on their swords. Kenna gripped Svadilfari’s mane tightly, whimpering in her confusion. When Ullr and Brynja dismounted the ring shifted to include them, and both put their hands up uncertainly. Loki felt angry; how _dare_ they frighten his children?

Luckily it was Thor who descended a few steps, Gungnir clasped in one hand. “Put those away,” he said, his voice carrying over the yard. “Can you not see that he means no harm?”

“My lord,” one of the guard captains said, “He bears his scepter.”

“I am certain Loki has a fine explanation for why he carries a weapon not seen in over a hundred years.” Thor met his eyes, and Loki returned the look, defiant. “One which I am sure encompasses our strange guest. But here is not the place.”

“And your dogs have no reason to threaten my _children_ ,” Loki snapped. One of the halberds had dipped slightly toward Brynja and she’d been glaring daggers at the guardsman holding it. He would brook no threat to her, or to any of them. “If one of them is touched I cannot say what exactly I will do, only that it will be unpleasant for everyone.”

“They only seek to protect me,” Thor told him gently, taking a few more steps down.

“And I only seek to protect _them_ , but—“ he looked around pointedly at the guards. Thor sighed and made a small gesture, and the guards reluctantly put up their weapons.

“Come inside, Loki,” he said. “We will discuss why you are here.”

Like the rest of the city, the palace was unchanged and unchanging. Oh, the banners that hung between the columns of the grand hallways were different, bearing Thor’s mark and a stylized Mjolnir below that, and some of the faces were new, but the essence of Asgard was its constancy. Before, Loki would have given much to be part of that, to deny his nature and _be Asgardian_ ; now it felt stifling. Certainly life in the north had a rhythm, but Loki was free of the mores of palace life and no longer missed it.

Rather than going to the throne room, Thor led the procession to one of the small halls. Whether by design or by chance, it was one that Loki had enjoyed reading in; the side that opened to the air had planters along the edge, and the light coming in was diffused through the tendrils and blooms of hanging plants. The courtiers were kept outside, only two guards followed them in, and when the door was closed Thor sat and beckoned his nieces and nephew over and embraced them all.

“You all grow so fast,” he said. Loki fidgeted with the scepter, watching out of the corner of his eye. “Ullr, you look more like your father every time I see you.” When Ullr stiffened, Loki felt a perverse glee; tired or not, frightened or not, Ullr did not like being compared so to his father. 

Apparently sensing this was a poor topic, Thor took a breath and looked over at his once-brother. “Will you come and sit, Loki? We have much to talk about, and I think what I have to say will be of interest to you, and will explain something of why your home was attacked.” When everyone was seated, Thor took a breath.

“We received word this morning from a group of dark elves,” he began. “They are holding Sif in their fortress—“

“And you are not launching a rescue operation _why_?” Thor winced at the ice in Loki’s voice, but in truth he was not the only one feeling a chill. Cold fear had slapped Loki in the face, fear of losing what was his, fear of being alone with only his thoughts.

“We do not know exactly where this place is,” Thor replied. “We put it somewhere in the Kyaleth mountain range, but that place is riddled with steep-walled valleys and cave systems. We could search for years and never find them, and we do not have years. They have made demands, Loki.”

“Which are?”

“They proposed a trade. One for one.”

Loki sat back, realizing the implication. “Ah,” he said, then looked at his children. “All of you. Go find your grandmother and make your manners.”

Kenna hopped down and made for the door, but Brynja and Ullr started protesting at the same time, pushing each other out of the way.

“Why can we not stay, I want to help and so does Ullr—“

“You cannot _do_ this—“

“I can fight too, I’m _good_ at—“

“She’s _my mother_ and—“

“Enough!” Brynja closed her mouth with a snap, but Ullr’s eyes flashed hard and bright, and much to his surprise, Loki felt the telltale ozone tingle of magic start up in his mouth. The green glow was barely visible in the light, but he could see it, and with the way Thor started and the guards shifted uneasily, so could everyone else. Brynja gave her brother an unsure look.

“She’s my mother,” Ullr repeated quietly, glaring at Loki. “I have a right.”

Loki itched to release his magic – the scepter urged him to, longed for the release of power – but he would not hurt his own son. “I know,” he ground out, forcing his hands to relax and not clench into fists. “But I will not allow it at the expense of your safety.”

“That never stopped you,” his son snapped. “Or Mother. _She_ wouldn’t hesitate to bring us along.”

“She would,” Loki muttered. “Do not argue further, Ullr. I have made up my mind. If I change it, you will know.”

“You—“ Ullr began, but shut his mouth. Every line of his face was angry, though, and he stormed past his father toward the door, with his sisters trailing after him. Thor gestured to one of the guards to escort them, and sighed when the door closed again.

“He is more like his mother than myself,” Loki muttered. “That stupid, headstrong attitude is all from her.”

“Not as much as you think.” Thor passed a hand over his face. “You cannot treat him like a child anymore, Loki, for he will not be one much longer.”

“I will not let him—“

“I am not saying you should. But I think you are also fooling yourself about many things.” The resulting uncomfortable silence stretched on for several minutes before Thor sighed. “Let us move on, though. Despite our differences, we both want Sif to come back safely.”

*

Some hours later, when their discussion had moved from the small hall to a war room laid out with maps and what information they had from the mind-rolled dark elf, Loki was escorted up to one of his mother’s gardens. He had surrendered the scepter and seen it placed safely in a special room ensorcelled for holding it, for Frigga would not allow the thing near her. Whatever his sentiments on family, Loki would heed her wishes, for her kindness hid more strength than seemed possible for a lady of the court.

The doors opened onto a covered patio, and when she saw who it was Frigga rose to meet him, first clasping his hands and then drawing him down for a tight embrace.

“My son has returned,” she whispered, and something in his chest squirmed to hear the unguarded joy in her voice, as though he was not worthy to hear such things from her lips and heart. Still, he put his hands on her back and returned the gesture, if only because it was what was expected of him.

“Only until I rescue Sif,” he replied, and glanced past her to where he could hear the shouts of children. Brynja and Kenna were playing with one of their cousins in a clear pool, and under the shade of a tree, he could see Ullr and Modi talking animatedly about something. Ullr had his bow out and was demonstrating something about it, and the squirming turned to a stab of guilt that he quickly suppressed. Frigga was watching him beadily.

“He arrived in a right state,” the dowager queen said primly. “Frustrated and sad and feeling as though he matters as much to you now as he did when you first found out about him, which is to say not at all.”

“That is not—“

“I know,” Frigga said, putting up a hand. “And I think deep down, Ullr knows, but…” she turned to the cluster of handmaidens and clapped her hands once. “Please leave us for a time,” she said. “Go speak to petitioners. No doubt the king is busy with other things.” When they were gone, she gestured to a seat covered in embroidered cushions, and they both sat.

“They have grown so quickly, all of them.” Frigga watched the girls with a smile on her face, pale and dark-haired little Kenna holding her own against the older two. “I remember when Sif rode with each of the girls after they were born, bringing them to show me. She is proud of both of them.”

“I am proud of _all_ my children,” Loki said emphatically. “Ullr…”

“He remembers.” Frigga touched his arm, sliding her fingers to his hand and gripping it. “Can you blame him? He remembers that his mother had to fight to get you to become his father in truth, and he had to fight so that you stopped seeing him as a stranger. He remembers that until Sif gave up living close to her friends and the things _she_ values, you were unpredictable and dangerous on your _good_ days.”

“I am so glad I have your support, Mother,” Loki said icily. “Sif did not have to ask for me to claim Ullr as mine—“

“No,” Frigga interrupted, “She did not, and she could have done as many women have done before her and raised him on her own, and none would have blamed her for wanting to keep you out of his life altogether. But did Ullr not deserve to know you?”

That was a question that had kept him awake many nights. “Betimes it seems he thinks it not worth the trouble.”

“And betimes it seems he may be right. But you wanted to make the effort to know him and raise him, and that says much of you.”

“I have not been as good a father as I could be,” Loki mumbled. Truth hurt as much to speak as to hear.

“Nobody ever is. Some just succeed more often than others.” Frigga watched him. “You at least try, which is more than can be said for some who beget children. Though do not neglect Sif’s role in this.” Frigga reached over and plucked a nebula flower, one of the plants he had helped her tend when he was young, and considered the golden-orange blossom. “She has sacrificed much to ensure you were there for Ullr, and she certainly did not bear you two more children for the fun of it.”

“I was there,” Loki said. “She broke my hand birthing Brynja.”

“Proof that your children were as difficult as both their parents from the womb.”

They laughed, and Loki felt a little better, though his thoughts were not. Sif remained a mystery to him at times, and his feelings regarding her were not as clear as he thought they should be for her being the mother to his children. Sometimes he hated her for dragging him into parenthood, sometimes he loved her for being the one person he could trust in a life that had little but darkness and pain in it, and naturally he desired her all the time, and yet…

Their talk turned to other subjects after that, to the north, to matters of Sif’s rescue and what Loki meant to do about it, and when the light began to dim, Frigga rose and called for some of her attendants to bring dinner from the kitchens.

“Do you not wish to dine with the others?” Loki asked, feeling oddly shy about asking. Frigga gave him a very level look.

“My son returns to the palace with his three children after over a hundred years away. If I eat without them, it will be as though I am shoveling ashes into my mouth. Now corral my grandchildren and see that their hands are washed, Loki.”

Ullr seemed to have brightened in the intervening hours, and sat next to his father at dinner, and though alarm bells sang in Loki’s mind and no small part of him wanted to run out after Sif _now_ , he found himself enjoying the time more than he thought possible. After passing the night in fear and a race to the city, it was… relaxing, to have a dinner out under the light of the stars and the branches of Yggdrasil.

When night fell, and after Kenna started crying when she nodded off into her bowl of ice cream (one of the more delightful imports from Midgard), Frigga deemed it time for bed.

“No doubt you will have some last-minute plans to make in the morning, dear son,” she said to Loki. “And the little ones have had a rough time of it lately.”

“We’re fine,” Brynja insisted. But her eyes were red and there were bags under her eyes. Loki pressed his lips together.

“You are all going to bed,” he said, shifting Kenna as she pressed her sticky face into his neck and hiccupped.

The suite of rooms they were shown to was large, befitting someone of royal blood even if he was no longer part of the line. Ullr had his own room, and the girls shared one with two smaller beds, and there was a master bedchamber down a short hallway off the common room. Loki put the girls to bed and paused outside Ullr’s door, feeling awkward.

“You did well last night,” he said at last. “You kept your head and made sure your sisters were safe. Thank you.”

Ullr looked up from his book; a small stack had been waiting on his bedside table, apparently the titles he had asked Sif for. To Loki’s surprise, he smiled a little. “We fight,” he said, “But we all… we’re a family. I could not have done less for them.”

Loki could not find the words for a moment – which fact, he thought, was impressive enough. “You have much of your mother in you,” he said quietly. “She will be proud when she finds out.”

Ullr’s face grew pinched. “You will find her, Father? You will bring her back?”

“I swear it.” Loki reached for the doorknob. “Get some sleep, Ullr. Your sisters will need you again.”

“I know.” Ullr returned to his book, and Loki closed the door, crossing the darkened common room to the master bedchamber. Like the one at home, it was too big, too empty and echoing without Sif there to help fill it. But the echoes here were full of darkness and regrets and memories of times that were less than kind, and it took him a long time to fall asleep.

When he awoke the next morning, the doors to the two other bedrooms were open, and his children were gone.

*

“Sif?”

She jumped when Thor touched her arm. “I apologize, my king,” she said, putting a bit more emphasis on the title than necessary. It was, after all, Thor’s coronation feast, and really Sif ought to have been inside. Ullr was with the other young ones, Loki had actually been cajoled into attending the feast (if not the coronation itself), and all her friends who, between motherhood and her duties as sworn warrior had not been able to see her much since Ullr’s birth, were in attendance. But instead of being there, laughing and drinking and celebrating her friend’s coronation and the impending birth of his first child, she was out here, trying to get her temper back under control.

“It’s my brother, is it not?” Thor knew her answer before she said anything, and sighed. “I know he is not really happy. I can _see_ it, and I would do everything I could to fix it, but I know not what that entails. And—“

“—everything we try seems to only make it worse.”

“Is he still… does he still have his rages?”

“Yes. And he stalks around like a caged animal. He says he feels… trapped, though why, I know not. Betimes I can see him rub his wrists and touch his face, as though that damnable muzzle was still on him.” Sif was quiet, staring out across the brilliantly lit city. Fireworks rose between buildings, shouts of joy rose from a hundred revels in a hundred taverns, but apart from her joy for her friend, she felt empty.

Thor was quiet too. “I thought it would be enough to remand him to your custody,” he said. “Let him live with you – and he obviously cares about you, I can see that much – and his son. I thought it would ease his mind.”

“We were both wrong,” Sif told him. “Do not be so hard on yourself, my king. I was the one who suggested it.” She dug her nails into her palm. “I was the one who was weak.”

“You care for him, too.” Thor leaned on the balustrade. “It is no weakness to wish for the best in others. The question, though, is what can we do?”

“Loki’s rage is terrible when it takes him.” Sif watched as red and gold fireworks arced up into the sky, rivaling Yggdrasil for light. “It is as though he loses himself, as though something from his dark past rises up and takes hold and anything that was your brother or my—my lover—is completely gone.”

And then, out of the sadness of Thor’s gaze, she saw a spark of hope.

“Tomorrow morning, come to my audience chamber,” he told her. “I think we may be able to help him.”

*

The hall had no warning before Loki appeared in its midst, scepter in hand and rage carved into the lines of his face. 

Startled, the guards rushed forward. One jabbed at him with a halberd; a sharp gesture of his hand threw up a force field between Loki and the guard that deflected the blade, and then Loki slammed the butt end of the scepter into the guard’s skull. He fell, and the others pushed forward until a shout from Thor stopped them.

“Loki!” he called, his voice reverberating through the grand columned hall. “Stop this at once!”

Loki’s head snapped up, his eyes wild as he dropped into a crouch. “Where are they?” he hissed in reply. “What have you done with them?”

Thor’s brow furrowed, and he glanced at Jane first – seated beside the throne on her cushioned stool, where she sat to advise him – and then at Frigga, watching Loki with anger on her face, and then he started down the steps from the throne. “What do you mean?” he asked carefully.

“Do not _play games_ with me, Thor, you were never any good at them.” Loki made another sharp hand gesture, and the guards between him and Thor flew through the air, skidding across the polished floor. “You _know_.”

Thor planted Gungnir on the floor and walked up slowly, hands held before him – though Loki did not miss the way his eyes flicked to Mjolnir on its plinth. “We have had a very disturbed morning, Loki,” he said. “But tell me, what has happened? It is possible that these things are related.”

Loki took a breath, looked around at the faces of the courtiers staring. Watching, judging, afraid, but dispassionate as though this was some scripted drama for them. It made him _angry_ , but it pressed in on him, invisible walls of unwanted regard looking at him and judging him and seeing through him. The safety of his home was gone, Sif was captive, he was in this place he hated—

Forcing his hands to stop shaking and making himself draw in a long, slow breath, Loki turned the full force of his glare on his brother. “Where,” he said very slowly, “Are my _children?_ ”

*

They all sat around the hearth in the common room of Thor and Jane’s chambers. This close, Loki could see that Jane’s eyes were red-rimmed, her face puffed from crying, but she kept her chin up and did not flag in energy or will. For all his ill will toward Thor, Loki had found Jane much more difficult to turn his hate against once he had seen the depth of her mind. She was far more intelligent than others from Midgard, a quick wit and a quicker study.

“They vanished sometime in the night,” Thor was saying. “We saw them last a full candle-mark after nightfall, when we put them to bed. We woke up this morning, and they were gone. No guards saw them leave our rooms.”

“And there have been no demands made, which we think rules out the elves that have Sif.”

Loki paced. The walls still pressed in on him, but now that he could believe it was not some plot designed to wrest his family apart, he could think much more clearly. “Have their horses gone missing as well?” he asked.

“Yes,” Jane replied. “Both Modi’s and Betha’s. Nothing was said about Ullr’s or Brynja’s, but…” her eyes narrowed. “No, you don’t think—“

“I do think. They have gone after Sif – I know not where, but I will be able to find that out.”

“Will you do it?” Thor asked. “When you do, I can send guards—“

“I go alone. I do not need your _dogs_.”

“If they have gone into danger, Loki—“

“I will protect them, mine and yours.” Something in Loki eased when he looked at Thor and could see, really _see_ , that he was just as frightened and angry and worried. “Thor, you cannot stop me, so you may as well let me go.”

They stared at each other, then Thor at last nodded. “Very well,” he said. “I will provide anything you need – provisions, weapons – and I will have my warriors standing ready should you send word that you need them. That is _my_ condition, Loki.”

“Fine.” Loki waved a hand and started toward the door. “I’ll only be taking my scepter, I think. I need nothing else.”

*

He went to Modi and Betha’s rooms, but knew what he would find there. Traces of magic, small things that he had taught Ullr years ago used to slip everyone out of their rooms without being seen, and a return to their own suite confirmed that.

Ullr was smart, Loki thought as he ran his fingertips over the spines of the books on the nightstand. He knew what wards Loki had put up around their suite, knew that there wouldn’t have been one to detect general magic use – it had been attuned to the malicious kind of spells used to hurt and to kill. Cloaking spells and transport spells wouldn’t have triggered it, and ones that would have gone off at every instance of magic use wouldn’t have been used, given that Ullr’s own magic was occasionally still unpredictable. Ullr had taken advantage of that.

“Clever,” Loki murmured, a spell beginning to tingle in his palm.

Ullr would have waited until Loki was in the master bedchamber, trying to fall asleep. He would have cast a spell for silence of movement and woken his sisters, then transported them all first to Modi’s and then to Betha’s room, then to the stables. So it was there that Loki took himself next, and just outside the cavernous opening that could fit ten horses across, he gathered the spell and pressed his palm to the ground.

Green light erupted from around his splayed fingers, glittering brightly in the sunlight and streaking off across the palace grounds. There was a small grove of oak and rowan trees, planted in a ring around a hill where a single giant oak grew. It was representative of Yggdrasil, and it was a place where Loki had spent many hours himself as a boy. The spell led him there; along the way he could see signs of passage, a patch of dirt that bore a boot print, or places where the grass had not yet sprung back up under the weight of the hooves of four horses and a pony.

The trail ended at the outer branches of the old oak. The light simply cut off, leaking into the grass and dissipating, and Loki considered the wispy green tendrils before he banished the spell. So Ullr – for it was undoubtedly he who led the troupe of them – had taken them here, and transported themselves and their horses to…

Loki passed his hands over the spot, and caught a ball of light as it leaped into the air. It resolved into a sphere – a planet spinning through the universe of his palm. It was bleak and rocky, scattered in small patches by green or purple vegetation. As it rotated, a pulsating light appeared. The location the spell had connected to.

He banished the spell and wiped sweaty palms on his trousers, then turned and headed back toward the palace. Ullr had taken his sisters and cousins to Svartalfaheim, and there was not much time to go after them before the spell faded entirely and he could not follow its path any longer.

*

When he emerged in the realm, the green light had faded somewhat, but it was enough for him to be able to follow. Leaning over Svadi’s shoulder to make sure he had the trail, Loki heeled the horse forward. The children had maybe half a day’s lead, but he thought perhaps there would be other factors holding them back. And when he found them, he found out he was right.

They were huddled together under a rocky overhang, their horses’ backs to the brisk wind that swept the shrub-covered ground. They looked up, hearing the crunch of his horse’s hooves on stone. Modi and Betha had the grace to look sheepish at least, two perfect amalgams of their parents. Kenna and Brynja looked defiant, though, and Loki began to doubt who the true ringleader of the operation was, but that quickly deserted him.

Ullr lay on the ground beside a small magical fire, and the flickering light only served to highlight how pale he was. It made Loki’s gut clench in fear, for he knew the look of magic exhaustion well, and he knew its effects.

“Has he been sick?” he asked - _demanded_ \- as he dismounted. The children pulled the horses aside for him as he swept inside and knelt by Ullr’s side. Betha was the first to speak.

“He threw up when he got here,” she said. “Twice.”

“Thanks,” Ullr muttered, but it was a sign of how weak he was feeling that he leaned his head a little bit into his father’s touch. “I just need to rest. Then we’ll keep going.”

“No.” Loki pulled Svadilfari’s reins and let him into the circle the other horses made; a wave of a hand produced an enchanted rope tethering them all together, and another wave put up a ward beyond them. “We are staying the night here. You need to—“

“We _need_ to get _our Mother!_ ” Ullr yelled. He started to sit up, but then collapsed back and began heaving. Brynja surged forward with a sound of concern, but Loki snatched up one of the waterskins and held it to Ullr’s lips, letting him take small sips until he subsided, looking sullen.

“I want to get your mother as much as you do,” he said in a low voice, “But you cannot help her like this. I will not put you at risk.”

“ _Now_ you care,” Ullr muttered, but he closed his eyes and relaxed when Loki bid him to, and the girls ran off to find wood to make sure the fire didn’t die down when there was nobody awake to maintain its spell, and Modi walked the perimeter of the warding spell with his hand on his sword, and Loki was alone with his son.

*

Sif came back to the suite of rooms she now shared with Loki and Ullr and leaned against the door when she closed it, closing her eyes and letting the coolness of the embossed metal calm her.

_Is this what I fought my way up the ranks for?_ she thought. _Is this how I can serve Asgard, by leaving her jewel of a city behind?_

“Sif?”

She straightened, squared her shoulders, and marched on into the main common room. Benches surrounded a hearth, and the pillars opened out onto a stunning view of the city. Having a tie to the royal family, however tenuous, had its perks. Loki was on one of the couches, watching Ullr sleep. He was growing quickly, tall for his age already, and Sif could not help but smile proudly at her son. She touched his dark hair, then sat in the space Loki made for her. It was one of his good days, where the darkness did not press in so badly. That was good; it would make this easier.

“The king has made us an offer,” she said, and felt Loki tense beside her. “It is a very fine one. Will you hear it?”

“Will you give me a choice?”

“No.”

“Then please.”

She took a breath and said, “The north has been without a steward for too long; it needs someone to oversee the settlements there and make sure it tithes properly to the throne. The steward also settles—“

“I know what the stewards do.” Loki’s jaw worked; she watched him in profile, and suppressed the urge to throw her fist and knock the evil thoughts out of his mind. The healers had told her that only time could heal what ailed him, time and care, and she would have to be patient. “So my brother gives me a stewardship and sends me away—“

“He has not extended the offer to you,” Sif interrupted.

“What?” Loki’s eyes snapped to her. “ _You?_ ”

“I have accepted.” Sif looked out, over the spires of the city and the many-hued branches of Yggdrasil, and felt sadness. “I will serve Asgard wherever she sends me.”

“How long will you be gone?”

“You mistake me, Loki.” It was Sif’s turn to give him her best and most mischievous grin. “I am _leaving the city_ and going north, and I am not going alone.”

*

The other children were lumps under their bedrolls. Modi and Betha were curled up facing each other, and Brynja had fallen asleep with her head pillowed on Loki’s leg. He stared into the flames, forcing his fear down, away. Seeing Ullr pale on the ground like that, the realms had stopped their dance through the sky for a moment, and the things that Loki feared the most did not matter.

He looked over at his son now and saw Ullr’s eyes were half-open, watching him. “I said I would stand guard,” he said quietly. “I can go long without sleep but all of you cannot. You especially.”

Ullr remained silent, and it was only the fact that Loki knew he was being _watched_ that told him his son was actually awake. Some time later, though, Ullr stirred a bit. 

“You always act like you don’t care,” he said sleepily. “About me or Bryn or Ken or Mother. You always hold back.”

“I know.”

“You made Mother really upset.”

“I do have a tendency toward that.”

“Don’t mean _that_. Or, well. Not now, anyway. I mean before, when we were in the palace.” Ullr yawned, pulling his blanket up a little more around his shoulders. 

Loki stared at him through the shivering air around the flames. His son’s words cut through to the quick, for he could not forget the things he had done. “You were very young…”

“Doesn’t mean I don’t remember.” Ullr watched him. “But I think you do care. You care too much, so you pretend you don’t care at all. Mother hated it, because she only had me for a long time and then you came back, but you scared her.”

“I changed.”

“You scared me too. You… invaded. And you were angry all the time, and you yelled, and it scared me.”

“Would you rather I had stayed away?”

Ullr considered this. “Sometimes I want that,” he said quietly. “But sometimes, I don’t know.”

They both fell silent. After a moment, Loki said, “Get some rest, Ullr. In the morning, we will go find your mother.” Ullr said nothing, but rolled over onto his back and closed his eyes again, and soon his breathing deepened and evened out. Loki, though, stayed awake for a long time afterward.

*

Her cell was twelve paces by eight paces. It had a pallet, a bucket of tepid water, and an empty bucket for refuse. The window let in light, air, and sound.

It drove Sif mad.

After that first day, Alfyse had not returned. She sent her guards to alternately beat her and question her, but Sif could tell the questions were things they didn’t really care about the answers to. They just liked to hold down Asgard’s strongest warrior and beat her until she cried out in pain, then heal her so they could do it all again the next day. Sif knew she was strong and had withstood many things, but she worried…

_No_ , Sif told herself when the magical and physical onslaught paused for a moment. The faces of her children swam before her eyes; memories of warm mornings in bed with long-fingered hands and eyes made bright green with mischief. _I cannot break. I must not. It is no longer just Asgard that needs me._

The guards hadn’t resumed their fun yet, and Sif raised her head a few inches, swiping blood out of her eyes to peer at them. They seemed unconcerned, talking quietly amongst themselves. She made herself keep her eyes off the tiny crack in the stone where she’d managed to hide a piece of metal, broken off her ruined armor. It was no blade but it was jagged and sharp, and she could do quite a bit of damage with it if she had to. She’d slice her fingers to Hel, but it would be a small price to pay.

“Looks like we’re done with you for right now,” one of the guards said, and grabbed Sif by the hair. Hauling her upright, they forced a potion for healing down her throat, kept a grip on her arms as she felt the tingling, uncomfortable heat of the magic work on her wounds, and then thrust her back onto her pallet.

“Don’t worry,” one said as they filed out. “We’ll be back tomorrow.”

The door bolted behind the last of them, and Sif hauled herself up to sit against the wall, leaning her head against it. Her body was healed, but the magic did nothing for the aches or the exhaustion. She closed her eyes, then crawled onto the pallet and stretched out her muscles as much as she could. She wanted to be ready when her chance for escape came, and if she was stiff and couldn’t move fast, she wouldn’t ever make it home.

*

They had left the horses in a copse of stunted trees over the top of the ridge behind them. Loki had put up a barrier with magic to keep them in, the children had left them food and water, and with Ullr fully recovered they had followed a locator spell to the dark elves’ compound.

“Do you always put tracking spells on the things you give as gifts?” Loki muttered out of the side of his mouth. Ullr kept his eyes on the compound, tracking the movements of the patrols and marking ways into the buildings.

“If I told you, Father,” he said, “You wouldn’t take a gift from me ever again. Does it matter? She’s still wearing the necklace, otherwise I wouldn’t be getting a response.”

“Can you pinpoint the location? Which building?”

Ullr’s eyes narrowed, and the glow of magic surrounded him. Loki resisted the urge to send out a feeler to the magical screen he put up around them to hide them from any detection. He had to trust his own son’s ability. At last, Ullr raised a finger and pointed at a terraced building that rose up against the cliff face. “That one,” he said.

They crawled back from the top of the ridgeline and slipped down the rock-strewn slope to where the other children were huddled together. “Ullr, you will be coming with me, and so will Modi and Brynja,” Loki began, and held up his hands as a sudden torrent of protests came at him. “I say this only because, Kenna and Betha, you are both too young—“

“I’m _as old as Brynja_ ,” Betha cut in, her brown eyes flashing. “She’s only five years older. I can fight just as well as she can.”

“You must stay and watch Kenna—“

“I’m going with you,” his youngest daughter declared. “Mother would come after _me_.”

Loki stared at all of them. “Is there any way to make _any_ of you stay behind?”

“We’re very sorry, Uncle,” Modi replied. “But we’ve come this far. We’re going to rescue Aunt Sif.”

Rolling his eyes, Loki waved a hand. “Very well. But if any of you get hurt—“

“We will get to the Healing Rooms quickly,” Betha cut in, marching off with the same determined stride her mother used. “We have a long walk yet. I _suggest_ we come up with a plan on the way.”

The one they cobbled together wasn’t ideal, but then again, Loki had never anticipated assaulting a well-defended fortress with a small army of royal children, so he supposed it was the best that they could manage.

“Remember,” he said, pointing at Ullr over the heads of the younger girls, “Be spare with your magic, for while you _feel_ fine, you overextended yourself yesterday, and you need to be careful. You have that damnable archer’s bow. Use it.” Ullr gripped said bow tightly and nodded, but his eyes were excited, and Loki took that as his cue to grip Brynja’s arm tightly and wrap them all in his magic, transporting them from their sheltered place into the middle of the courtyard.

From there it was chaos of the finest order. The children scattered around him; Ullr firing arrows at lightning speed, Brynja darting from elf to elf with her slender knife. Modi had his sword and Betha her tiny crossbow. Kenna was the most effective, though. Being small she could slip around virtually unnoticed in the ruckus and made use of that, releasing horses and knocking over piles of supplies and generally making a mess, which was something she was more than proficient at doing.

They moved – not quickly, but with deliberate speed all the same – toward the gaping entrance of the building Ullr had indicated Sif was in. Loki tucked himself behind the jamb of the entrance, listening to the elves’ crossbow bolts tick off the stone, and watched as everyone ran past.

“Ullr,” he muttered, ticking them off, “Modi, Brynja, Betha…” a beat, and then a little dark head ran past. “…and Kenna.”

Once they were inside, he made a broad gesture with his hands, and the doors slammed shut behind them. The metal hinges glowed briefly, melting into inflexible pieces of slag, and the metal edges ran together and sealed the entrance.

They ran down the corridor, Brynja’s knife and Modi’s sword felling anyone in their way, and only slowed when they reached a branch point that split off in threes. Loki turned to his son.

“Ullr?”

His son paused in the middle of slipping recovered arrows back into his quiver, turning in place to look at each corridor. “This way,” he said, and Loki let him run ahead, following the tracking spell.

*

Sif tried to haul herself up to see out of the tiny window when she heard the commotion begin, but her arms gave out before she could get more than a glimpse of flashing steel. The guards in the cell corridor began yelling, and boots ran past her door.

_This is it,_ Sif thought to herself, and prized her little piece of metal out of its hiding spot. They would be coming for her soon, either to kill her or move her, and she had no intention of letting either one happen. Pressing herself into the corner hidden by the opening door, she waited, heart pounding and adrenaline lending her strength she had not had in the days of her imprisonment.

She didn’t have to wait long; the bolt on the door slid open, and in a flash Sif was leaping for the guard. She didn’t even feel the pain as the jagged edge of the metal sliced the pads of her fingers; she could only see the red line on the elf’s throat as blood welled out of the wound. Gurgling incoherently, he dropped to the ground, and Sif scooped up his own weapon – a one-handed sword – as the next guard charged through.

She was exhausted, worn to the bottom of her reserves, but she fought onward until they stopped coming. Stepping over the bodies, gripping her sword to keep her muscles from shaking, Sif ran out of the cell and looked down the corridor. There were no guards, but there was a closed door, and she ran for it. It was locked from the other side, though, and all her pounding and yelling and even a strike from the sword wouldn’t bring anyone to open it.

Grinding her teeth, Sif paced up and down the corridor. She would have to hope that her rescue found her quickly.

*

Following Ullr’s lead, they followed staircases and corridors full of elves who very much did not want to see them. Every so often they encountered locked doors in their way, opposite ones that were open and invitingly lit. Loki got the sense someone was trying to divert them from their path, and had it been only him perhaps he might have, but Ullr would always indicate the locked door and he would break it down and they would continue on.

At last they boiled up out of a staircase and into a long, dim corridor. There was a door to their left, and the stonework ended about twenty feet onward; the corridor from there on was smoothly-hewn stone.

“We’re near to the top of the constructed building,” Ullr said. “And Mother…”

He glanced at the door, and that was all that Loki needed. He didn’t bother with sliding the bolt or using magic, for he felt a surge of strength in his limbs and simply kicked the door in.

“ _Wow,_ ” he heard someone whisper behind him, but Loki wasn’t paying attention, for Sif was standing just beyond the door and she was all he could see. She looked tired, pale and worn; her hair was matted with blood, she had no armor on, and still she offered him one of her wolf’s grins.

“What kept you?” she asked. “I have been waiting for _days_.”

“News doesn’t travel very quickly from the city. You know how it is,” Loki heard himself say, but he felt very far away from it.

“I hope you didn’t burn a letter simply because it had Thor’s mark on it,” Sif began, but then she could say no more, for Loki had surged forward and grabbed her by the arms, leaning in to examine her more carefully.

“Are you hurt?”

“Do you care?”

“Everyone is preoccupied with how visibly I _care_ about things lately,” Loki snapped. “Do you think I should not?”

“I think—“

Loki kissed her, and into it poured the things he feared saying, the sentiment and tenderness that had grown in him since the move north – no, since the day he had found out he had fathered a son with Sif, the only woman who had ever mystified him and stilled his tongue with her own wit. He knew she tasted it, for she stilled, and then trembled, her fingers grasping for some purchase on him, pushing into his long hair. 

Someone behind them made a gagging noise, and so Loki let it carry on for a long moment before he pulled back. Sif was watching him with amusement when he opened his eyes, a little smile on her face, and… relief? Was that it?

“I hardly think here is the appropriate venue,” she murmured. Loki let her go, and she half-turned, her eyebrows drawing together as she saw Ullr looking embarrassed, Brynja rolling her eyes, and Kenna with her hands around her own throat and her eyes crossed. “You brought the children?”

“They brought themselves,” Loki replied. “I tagged along.” At her incredulous look, he shrugged. “I will tell you when the healers are tending to you.”

“Are you done being gross?” Brynja asked. “Can we go? I think I hear—Modi!”

More elves pounded up the stairs and as one the children turned, leaping on the frontrunners. Sif grabbed a sword from where it was leaning against the wall and charged in herself, teeth grit into a snarl. Loki did not hold back himself, throwing spell after spell with deadly accuracy. When the elves had all been taken down, Loki reached for Sif’s hand with one of his and Kenna’s with the other. 

“Take hands,” he said over his shoulder. “And hold on.” 

In a flash of green light, they were gone from the compound, standing just outside the magical barrier enclosing the horses. The ward banished, the children scattered to their mounts. He paused, eyes narrowed.

“Ullr,” he mumbled, “Brynja, Kenna, Modi, Betha—what?” he snapped at Sif, who was smiling at him.

“Nothing at all,” she replied, and sagged. Loki helped her up onto Svadilfari, settling her behind him. Sif leaned heavily against his back as though all her strength had left her, but as they turned and led the children away from the dark elves’ compound, Loki felt her brush her lips over the curve of his ear.

“Even after all these centuries,” Sif murmured, “You still surprise me. I never thought you capable.”

“Come now, Sif,” he said as he heeled Svadilfari into a gallop, “You know a trickster is always full of surprises.”

She laughed in his ear as they rode on, and the sound of it echoed even as the multicolored light of the Bifrost enveloped them and took them back to Asgard.

*

They had taken the ride north slowly; traveling with a boy Ullr’s age was difficult enough, and never mind the people who came out to gawk at Loki as he trotted past on Svadilfari. Sif glanced at him often, tense and worried that he would have one of his explosive episodes, and kept one arm hooked around Ullr as they rode.

“Is that it?” Loki asked as they cantered out of the forest and slowed to a trot. The spires of the manor house rose, mirroring the peaks that surrounded this valley. Golden wheat rustled gently in the wind, and even though she had many worries, many thoughts in her mind, Sif could not help but smile a little. 

“It is so peaceful,” she murmured. “A change from the palace, no?”

Loki gave her a long, curious look as they slowed to a walk when they passed under the archway into the courtyard. “It is a change,” he agreed. Sif dismounted and helped Ullr slide down off Asmundr, but her eyes were on Loki’s back.

“We are in control here,” she said. “Thor is not nearby to barge in. It will just be you and Ullr and myself. Is that not a good thing?”

“Is it what you wanted?”

It was such an unexpected question that Sif wasn’t sure how to answer for a moment. Part of her wanted to say no, she wanted to stay with the Einherjar and bloody her sword on quests for the glory of Asgard, to win glory and honor and a seat at the feast-table of Valhalla. But she was no longer simply Lady Sif, Shieldmaiden of Asgard. She was Lady Sif, Steward of the North, mother of Ullr… and something-or-other to Loki Silvertongue.

_How far I have come from a girl tearing her dresses and bloodying her knees in the training yard,_ she thought, and set Ullr down on the ground. He toddled toward the door, and she watched him, Asmundr’s bridle held in her hand.

“I suppose I will have to see if it is,” she replied. “With time.”

*

The children were all being tended in another room; they had minor wounds only, cuts and scrapes, and Ullr was being fussed over by Eir herself for his magical expenditure. That left Loki and Sif in a room by themselves. Sif had been told to get on the plushly-upholstered couch and _sit still_ until Eir had finished with her son, and she would have found it difficult had Loki not seated himself on the floor beside her.

“I am sure the king will have much to discuss with Alfyse in the days to come,” she said, touching the top of Loki’s head with her fingertips. Something had come back to him, she thought, one more piece of his missing self. It was not a fix, and she doubted he would ever be truly _cured_ of his malady, if such things were possible. It was simply something they would have to continue to work with, but now, she felt much more capable of that.

“Perhaps he will get your sword and shield back.” Loki’s forehead rested against her exposed thigh, and he’d curled his fingertips over the top of her leg, as though afraid she would disappear again.

“They served me faithfully while I had them. I would rather have gotten out with our skins intact than risk all of us to get _things_ back that I can just as easily have replaced.”

“True.” His fingertips curled, creeping up her thigh. “And you know, _you_ are certainly unique.”

Sif eyed the top of his head. “Loki, is this an appropriate—“

“Oh, hardly. Anyone could walk in.” His fingers slid up higher, brushing the hem of the long, loose shirt she’d been given to wear and then pushing up under it. Even in her condition, Sif felt the first curl of heat in her belly as her eyes grew heavy-lidded.

“Can it _wait_?” she whispered.

“I do not want to wait.”

“Loki, the healers could walk in at any moment—“

“Then let them.” Loki turned his head and pressed his lips to her leg, beginning to rise and ease himself onto the couch too. “I will—“

“Will _what_ , Loki?”

He froze, eyes snapping over to where his mother and Eir stood in the doorway, glaring at them. “I… ah, Mother…”

“Get off of her, Loki, she has spent days as a captive and by all accounts her body is completely exhausted. You are not to engage in any _petting_ until we have said she may. Now run along; your children need minding, and Sif needs examining.”

“But—“

“None of that. _Go_ , or else they may run off again.”

Loki gave his mother a halfhearted dark look and swept out of the room. Sif watched him go, and only realized she was looking after him fondly when Frigga touched her on the shoulder with a gentle smile.

“He came to the city for you,” she said quietly. “He was… dangerous, volatile, worried, but he put that aside when he realized you were in danger.”

“He is not better,” Sif began cautiously, and Frigga sighed, lifting up Sif’s shirt and probing her sides with cool fingers.

“No, and he will not be as he was ever again, I think. But so long as he can learn to manage himself, I think we will count it as a victory.” She ran her hands down the leg Sif had injured, feeling the bone for breaks. “The mind is a strange place, young one. Loki’s has always been beyond many of us. But I think being with you, he has made much progress.”

*

Life in the manor settled into a carefully-crafted routine. Sif learned what needed to be done to keep Loki from falling into darkness too often, Ullr continued to grow, and the three of them got along.

Ullr, she noticed, was quieter around his father. With her he had always been a happy, talkative baby and then a bright child, and whenever only the two of them were together he regained that. But Loki made that go away, and it hurt her heart to see it, for as Ullr grew so did the fact that he had inherited his father’s talent for magic, and she would see the two of them work on it together.

Then Brynja came, and Kenna, and the house that had first felt empty as a ruined hall had become full. One morning, she woke up, and realized that she was home.

*

When they had examined her and found her sound in body, Sif made her way back up to the suite where Loki and their children were staying. She found only Loki there, standing between two of the columns and staring out across the city. He turned to see her smiling at him and narrowed his eyes.

“You look smug,” Loki told her. “You aren’t pregnant again, are you?”

“After the last few days, I think we’ve all we can handle in that regard, don’t you? Where _are_ our errant offspring?”

“The children went down to play in one of the gardens with their cousins,” he said. “They all feel quite pleased with themselves, might I add.”

“They rescued me,” Sif replied, coming up to stand beside him. “They ought to feel proud.”

“Oh, but don’t tell them that.” Loki rolled his eyes skyward. “They’ll be insufferable for days.”

“And I wonder where they get _that_ bad habit from?”

“I can’t imagine.”

Sif bumped him with her shoulder as she turned and leaned on the balustrade. “Your mother asked again if we intend to marry.”

Loki eyed her. The subject of marriage had been a constant one since they had gone north, and it was something of a scandal that a former prince of Asgard cohabited with the mother of his children without some kind of binding contract between them, and never mind that the needs of their children and the inevitable pull they felt toward each other was binding enough. “And?”

“I replied that we had no reason to.” Sif shrugged. “Our arrangement works for us, does it not?”

Loki’s shoulders relaxed a hair. “It does. I shall not lose you to the chaos of impending matrimony, thank the gods.”

“If you’re certain.” Sif shrugged, trying and failing to keep a smile from crawling back onto her face. “I am certain I could have a gown made within the day, a green one with flowers and ruffles…”

Loki groaned. “Do not speak of it. I grow irritated with wedding guests that are not even here.” He was quiet, looking at her. “Would you truly wear green?”

“I look good in the color.” Her smile turned wolfish as she thought of a time, a sunlit morning when Ullr had just entered his sixth decade and had gone to visit his aunt and uncle and grandparents in the city and Sif had gone down to Loki in his study wrapped only in his forest-green cloak. By the sudden glint in his eye, Loki was thinking of it too.

That glint faded a little though, the corners of his mouth turning down. “Thor asked me to stay in the city for a short time. He wants me to advise him.”

“Do you wish to?”

Loki brought his thumb up, chewing on the cuticle, and then shook his head and reached for her, burying his face in her throat. “This place is no longer my home,” he mumbled against her skin, his hands sliding under her dark red tunic. “I am… better in the north.”

“Then we return home.” Sif stroked his hair, her eyes closing in pleasure at the featherweight of his touch. “Brynja can return, though. She needs to study under the weaponsmaster.”

“Very well.”

“And Ullr can visit and speak to those who know of magic here. He grows too powerful for you to teach alone, Loki. Soon he will need the knowledge of others.”

Loki growled and dug his nails into her sides and Sif drew in a long, hissing breath. “ _Fine_ ,” he halfheartedly snapped. “And Kenna?”

“Oh, she’s far too young to leave home just yet.” Sif reached up and wrapped locks of his hair around her fingers, tugging just hard enough for him to sigh and push against her, their bodies molding together, stronger when they were one than they could ever be apart. “Don’t you think?”

“I think,” Loki said, his voice deliciously low in her ear, “That we have some time to ourselves before our children invade these rooms again. Let us make the best use of it before we return to the madness of the north.”

“That is the best idea I have ever heard from your liar’s tongue,” Sif told him. “Come with me, Loki. I wish to go _home_.”

Magic tickled against her spine, and in the next moment, only golden motes of dust floated across the balcony, drifting on currents of air.


End file.
